I’ve been impressed with Isaiah the last few weeks. His words are timeless. He describes patterns which recur whenever people seek to follow God. It is little wonder Nephi chose to adopt many of Isaiah’s words to describe what he (Nephi) had seen in vision.
I’m struck by how often one prophet will adopt the words of another prophet as his own. One of the great moments in scripture is when Jacob has his people come up to the temple, promising to give them a prophecy. When they arrive, he reads them the words of Zenos, found in Jacob Chapter 5. Then, after this long recitation of Zenos’ words by Jacob, he adds the following:
“As I said unto you that I would prophesy, behold, this is my prophecy– that the things which this prophet Zenos spake, concerning the house of Israel, in the which he likened them unto an unto a tame olive tree, must surely come to pass.” (Jacob 6: 1.) That’s it. His great prophecy: What Zenos said will happen!
“As I said unto you that I would prophesy, behold, this is my prophecy– that the things which this prophet Zenos spake, concerning the house of Israel, in the which he likened them unto an unto a tame olive tree, must surely come to pass.” (Jacob 6: 1.) That’s it. His great prophecy: What Zenos said will happen!
I like that. Succinct. No messing around. Just telling these folks that this prophecy he read from another prophet was from God.
It’s a profound message. We endlessly lose light. Then assignments come to prophets to bring back a little (or a lot) of it, and they restore again. We’ve been in the process of restoring truth since Adam. This is because we have also been in the process of discarding truth since Adam. It’s a race between the discarding and the restoring. Mostly discarding seems to win.